Volume 47, Issue 1

Nietzsche’s Catharsis: The Theory of Tragedy and the Anthropology of Power. Nietzsche’s conception of catharsis undercuts the Aristotelian tradition by emphasizing that catharsis does not aim at a purification of the passions but at a cleansing of human judgment from moral sentiment. As such, Nietzsche develops a naturalistic counter-model to eighteenth-century theories of pity (e. g. Rousseau, Lessing). By bringing together ancient Greece and the experience of modernity, this counter-model shifts the concept of catharsis into the realm of the political and enriches the theory of tragedy with an anthropology of power. What is at stake in Nietzsche’s discussion of catharsis is an insight into the instability of normative order, which is triggered by the modern experience of the „phenomenon of Napoleon“ as an overcoming of Enlightenment conceptions of moral conscience. If modernity has to be understood along the lines of tragedy (e. g. Hegel), Napoleon Bonaparte is the cathartic event in the realm of the political.

Poetry in lieu of thinking. Reflections on the genesis of song in the third part of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. The chapter Von der grossen Sehnsucht opens the final section of Nietzscheʼs Also sprach Zarathustra with a speech in which Zarathustra invites his soul to sing and in which he starts to sing himself. Based on Nietzscheʼs own late interpretation in Ecce homo, this article focuses on the narrative coherence and poetic logic of the chapter Von der grossen Sehnsucht. While the address to the soul can be understood as a soliloquy that corresponds to the definition of thinking in Platoʼs Sophistes, the chapter Von der grossen Sehnsucht also allows insight into the relationship between thinking and writing. Von der grossen Sehnsucht, after all, follows the chapter Der Genesende, in which Zarathustraʼs animals talk to him about eternal recurrence. Moreover, the invitation to sing anticipates the Dionysos-Dithyramben: the address to the soul is followed by Das andere Tanzlied and the Ja-und Amen-Lied, which Nietzsche describes as a dithyramb. As such, the chapter Von der grossen Sehnsucht introduces dithyrambic poetry.

“Conversations with Dionysus”. Nietzsche’s Playful Riddles. Nietzsche has written several short dialogues that are rarely studied. Based on the mysterious ‘conversations with Dionysus’, which also include the Dionysian Dithyramb „Ariadneʼs Lament“, the paper outlines their enigmatic structure and, on this basis, proposes an interpretive model for Nietzscheʼs labyrinthine texts.

In this essay I evaluate a new and influential interpretation of Nietzsche’s idea of the slave revolt in morality. This interpretation was first proposed by Bernard Reginster and has since been extended by R. Lanier Anderson and Avery Snelson. Citing textual evidence from Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morality, these scholars have argued for the counterintuitive view that nobles, not slaves, instigated the slave revolt in morality. This is because Nietzsche says that nobles create new values, introduces priests as nobles, and claims that priests began the slave revolt. However, against this new approach I argue that these scholars neglect important evidence from these same texts in which Nietzsche claims that the psychologically slavish can also create values, assumes that politically subordinated nobles can lose their psychological nobility, and asserts that the slave revolt was instigated by psychologically slavish priests. I also argue that these scholars ignore Nietzsche’s related claims that the priestly peasant Luther renewed the Jewish slave revolt against re-ascendant Roman nobles and that the plebeian philosopher Socrates led a slave revolt in morality against the Athenian nobles. Thus, it turns out that none of the leaders of the slave revolt were noble and that one of them was not even priestly. I conclude with a defense of the traditional and straightforward view that Nietzsche always conceived of the slave revolt in morality as an act of revenge by oppressed people who are politically and psychologically ignoble.

Given its apparently scholarly form, the Genealogy of Morals is often read as a succinct, relatively systematic, and canonical exposition of Nietzsche’s mature views on morality. This article argues, however, that the work was intended as a parody of a scholarly treatise and examines how this parody is best understood. It begins by surveying some evidence that supports reading the Genealogy as a ‘textbook’ presentation of Nietzsche’s views. It then develops an exegetic case for reading it as a work of parody, based on the third essay’s claims about the ‘self-cancellation’ of truth-directed discourse and how to oppose the ascetic ideal, along with the Genealogy’s internal organization and its place in Nietzsche’s oeuvre. Finally, it examines whether this parody is best interpreted philosophically as having the force of a strong parody that denies the possibility of truth-directed enquiry or that of a weak parody denying the intrinsic value of such enquiry. Although reading it as a strong parody perhaps makes it more radical and potentially appealing, I argue that the Genealogy is best read as a weak parody, because this is both more tenable and suffices for the claims Nietzsche himself makes about the work’s aims and character.

Nietzsche’s 1873 fragment, the Zeitatomenlehre, posits a temporal conception of action at a distance where space is reduced to a single point and time consists only in a series of discrete atoms. Taken as a physical doctrine that destroys all spatial difference, this conception raises serious conflicts with the rest of his work. I describe and situate this theory within the historical context of debates over action at a distance in nineteenth-century physics, distinguish it from physical theories influential on Nietzsche, and argue that these conflicts can be resolved only by viewing it in the anti-metaphysical phenomenalist and representational terms that he also expressed in his early work.

Eternal recurrence and the principle of economy in Nietzscheʼs thought. This paper explores the place that the principle of parsimony occupies in Nietzscheʼs thought. I argue that the principle of parsimony is one of the criteria that allow Nietzsche to organize the many different interpretations available to us into a hierarchy. The question is whether Nietzsche can justify the use of this principle without making it a petitio principii. Oddly enough, it seems that eternal recurrence has a role to play in this context. The most important problem Nietzsche has to confront is the problem of circularity. Bringing together Nietzsche’s specific conception of truth with the problem of eternal recurrence allows us to recognize that circularity provides for access to a higher density of the real.

Pascal and the „Proof by Power“. Nietzsche’s Examination of a wounded intellectual conscience. This paper sheds new light on Nietzsche’s praise of Pascal’s probity by analysing what the German philosopher calls the „proof by power“. This proof, adopted by Christianity at large, consists in making pleasure and well-being the very criteria of truth and, as such, it represents for Nietzsche a sheer dishonest form of reasoning. When Pascal finally decides to use this proof in the Pensées, he is already conscious of its lack of scientific value and of its dishonesty. Nietzsche thus reveals in Pascal’s thinking the torments of a wounded intellectual conscience, torn between its fidelity to the Christian tradition and its probity inspired by this very piety. In this respect, the famous wager’s argument appears as a testimony of this tension: it is a brilliant but desperate attempt of giving this „proof by power“, which the scientific rigor it is fundamentally lacking.

This essay focuses on the similarities between Nietzsche’s and Carnap’s views on metaphysics, without ignoring their obvious differences. The essay argues that Nietzsche and Carnap endorse but interpret differently an overcoming metametaphysics characterized by the conjunction of the following three claims: (O-i) an overcoming of metaphysics ought to be performed; (O-ii) this overcoming is to be performed by adopting a method of linguistic analysis that is suspicious of the metaphysical use of language and that interprets such use through a different use of language which aims to avoid metaphysics; and (O-iii) this overcoming contributes to the political task of resisting “diseased” metaphysical practices and promoting “healthy” non-metaphysical practices.

Will to Power, Eternal Recurrence, and the Being of Entities. Heidegger’s “Aus-einander-setzung” with Nietzsche. The article examines the internal dynamics of Heidegger’s influential interpretation of Nietzsche, focusing on his lectures written between 1936 and 1942, which form the basis for Heidegger’s two-volume book Nietzsche, first published in 1961. Speaking of Heidegger’s interpretation of Nietzsche is potentially misleading, however, since Heidegger gave a series of different interpretations that contradict one another in some essential points. In the first two lectures from 1936/37, we can still observe a far-reaching identification with Nietzsche as the mastermind of a ‘new beginning’ in the ‘history of being’. Nevertheless, shortly afterwards, Heidegger makes Nietzsche’s metaphysics responsible for the domination of modern technology and thus for the last stage of the ‘forgetting of being’. As such, Heidegger no longer views Nietzsche as a thinker of ‘transition’, but merely as the philosophical founder of a hopeless ‘end time’. Against this backdrop, and after the Second World War, Heidegger declared that this particular critique of Nietzsche entailed an “intellectual resistance” against National Socialism. This assertion is discussed at the end of the article together with Heidegger’s rapprochement with Nietzsche during the early 1950s.

Nietzsche’s Aristophanes. Nietzsche dealt extensively with Aristophanes in his early work. This article reconstructs some of the sources and contexts of Nietzsche’s work on Aristophanes and, against the backdrop of the conventional image of Aristophanes in classical philology, pays tribute to Nietzsche’s farsighted social and political analysis of Attic comedy.

The Sculptor of the Overman and the Dithyrambic Artist: Michelangelo and Wagner in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. This paper draws on the work of Mazzino Montinari in order to explore the relations between Nietzsche’s image of Michelangelo and specific elements of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. These elements concern the idea of the overman and the figure which is sleeping in the stone. A biography of Michelangelo by the art historian Herman Grimm, a correspondent of Ralph Waldo Emerson, may be the source of Nietzsche’s reference to a mysterious statue described in the chapter “Of Those who are Sublime”. Moreover, Jacob Burckhardt’s Cicerone may help to explain the relationship between Wagner and the sculptor. One way to understand the context of this image is to return to the fourth Untimely Meditation - Richard Wagner in Bayreuth - in which Nietzsche portrays Wagner as both a sculptor and a dithyrambic artist. Some years later Zarathustra/Nietzsche will himself appear as the sculptor of the overman and as the authentic dithyrambic poet, that is the authentic “musician of the future”.

“One repays a teacher poorly, if one always remains only a student”: A New Look at Gast’s Relation to Nietzsche. It is widely known that Heinrich Köselitz (alias “Peter Gast”) was a loyal and close friend throughout Nietzsche’s life, symbolizing the so-called “Versüdlichung der Musik”. It is surprising, however, that a careful consideration of their mutual intellectual influence has largely been lacking. Gast is often considered intellectually inferior to Nietzsche, although very dedicated to the latter’s work. As a consequence, most studies tend to foreground Gast’s editorial work on Nietzsche’s writings but generally ignore how Gast shaped Nietzsche’s concepts. In order to better understand their theoretical exchange, it is necessary to widen our hermeneutic horizon beyond Nietzsche’s published works, focusing instead on the edition of Nietzsche’s notebooks in KGW IX, on the correspondence between Gast and Franz Overbeck, but also on Gast’s musical compositions and aesthetic writings. This approach highlights that Gast was not merely an enthusiast of Nietzsche’s ideas, and Nietzsche’s occasional secretary, but directly influenced and shaped the development of Nietzsche’s intellectual world.

Eugen Dühring - A handwritten note on ‘Nietzsche’ from 1896. This paper contains the first publication of a yet unknown manuscript, which Eugen Dühring wrote in response to his reading of - in part falsified and decontextualized - passages about him in Koegel’s edition of Nietzsche’s late notes. Dühring’s note reveals blatant anti-Semitism and he vituperates Nietzsche as a ‘lawyer’ of Jews. The note is subsequently used in later publications of Dühring and his followers. The paper continues to reconstruct Dühring’s engagement with Nietzsche and discusses some aspects of Nietzsche’s reading of Dühring. Despite Dühring’s significance for Nietzsche’s philosophical development, initial similarities are outweighed by important differences.

In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, Thomas Mann and Georg Lukács both sought to come to terms with the multifaceted role of philosophy in the catastrophe of fascism. The figure of Nietzsche is (re-)examined in Mann’s Nietzsches Philosophie im Lichte unserer Erfahrung (1947) and Lukács’ Die Zerstörung der Vernunft (1954). It is generally recognised that Mann’s lecture helped to shape the post-war Nietzsche reception in the West as much as Lukács’ treatise did in the East. In contrast, I argue that Mann’s and Lukács’s contributions have more in common than is generally acknowledged and, given Mann’s esteem in the field of Nietzsche studies, that these similarities call into question the general repudiation of Lukács’ Nietzsche-Bild. After sketching the phenomenon of partisanship in the reception of Nietzsche through the lens of Kant’s notion of a ‘Kampfplatz’, some of the key topoi of Lukács’ work are identified, highlighting the aforementioned similarities in content and methodology as well as the contrasts with Western academic approaches.

Gabriel Marcel’s writings stand in a complex relationship to Nietzsche’s thought. Paying homage to Nietzsche’s influence as one of the most eminent representatives of the existential thought, Marcel is aware that he deals with a thinker who is as distant from him as he is very close. Marcel’s references to Nietzsche’s thought are tied to Nietzsche’s expression “God is dead”, and the end of the divine is the theme that simultaneously highlights the greatness and the tragedy of Nietzsche. Marcel accepts the contradictions of Nietzsche’s philosophical thought as both dangerous and fruitful.

This review essay brings together five books on various aspects of Nietzsche’s thinking and writing from the last four years, from different cultural and political contexts, but also spanning a wide methodological range. The general question of how to orient ourselves in Nietzsche-scholarship is inspired by the title of Werner Stegmaier’s book which invites the reader to compare Nietzsche and Niklas Luhmann. It also invites us to contemplate the more general question of how to bring Nietzsche’s thinking into a dialogue with the human and social sciences. A central question concerns the temporality of Nietzsche’s thinking: is Nietzsche’s thinking a thing of the past that primarily necessitates a historical interpretation, or can it still open up ways toward the future. As this review highlights, many contemporary readers of Nietzsche continue to see themselves as working to “save” his texts from fateful misinterpretations. The last part of the review focuses on the new textual, or “poesiological” approach and the importance of seeing Nietzsche not primarily as someone professing a doctrine, but as the creator of uniquely multilayered texts.

This review essay expands on two excellent collections dealing with Nietzsche and Wagner and is drawn from the proceedings of conferences in the bicentennial year of Wagner’s birth. It points to four areas underplayed in the contributions. The first involves Nietzsche’s adoption of Wagnerian ideology, especially anti-Judaism, in the late 1860s and early 1870s. The second deals with Nietzsche’s actual activities and sentiments regarding the inaugural Bayreuth festival in 1876 and his later reports of these activities and sentiments. A third topic concerns the break from Wagner, its likely causes, and its stylization in Nietzsche’s recollections from the 1880s. And lastly the essay examines the ambivalence toward Wagner in Nietzsche’s writings from 1888 as part of an autobiographical imperative. In general, the collections reviewed place too much trust in Nietzsche’s own accounts of the relationship with Wagner and fail to recognize that, especially in the 1880s, the philosopher is engaged in a process of self-fashioning to bring his current views into harmony with a history embellished and manipulated to give the appearance of linear development and consistent beliefs.

Nietzsche and the philosophy of the art of living. The books under review trace the network of relationships between Nietzsche and the ancient philosophy of the art of living. Further, Nietzsche’s idea of the art and style of living is placed in the context of existentialism and, above all, in close proximity to the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard. It becomes clear that Nietzsche’s concept of the art of living cannot be reduced to the philosophical and historical context of classical concepts of self-care; rather, Nietzsche’s views have to be situated in the context of modern and current philosophical theories. In addition, questions such as the alleged naturalism in Nietzsche’s work, as well as the possible continuity between his early and late writings, are strongly related to the analysis of a Nietzschean art of living.

This essay reviews two installments in the Heidelberg Academyʼs Historical and Critical Commentary series on the works of Friedrich Nietzsche. While Sarah Scheibenberger’s volume focuses on Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense, highlighting the sources and influence of Nietzsche’s text, Jochen Schmidt and Sebastian Kaufmann provide a detailed and extremely useful contextualization of Daybreak and of Nietzsche’s poetry.

Reading and commenting on Nietzsche. New interpretations of Beyond Good and Evil. Two recent volumes on Nietzsche’s text highlight its fundamental ambivalence. On the one hand, Beyond Good and Evil is marked by a dynamic openness for experiment, critique of dogmatism, and stylistic sophistication; on the other hand, the argument centers on themes, such as the opposition between slaves and nobles, exploitation and new forms of tyranny, decadence and will to power, harshness and cheerfulness. Following the two volumes under discussion, I examine how and whether these diametrically opposed aspects of Nietzsche’s text can be brought together in a way that also allows us to reassess other basic themes of Nietzsche’s thought. The latter include the oppositions between the unity and the plurality of the will to power, Nietzsche’s emphasis on the „free spirit“ and his search for a „higher type“, his critique of morality and the creation of new values, his commitment to Europe and authoritarianism.

After presenting an overview of the research on Nietzsche’s political thought, this article discusses Robert C. Holub’s book Nietzsche’s Jewish Problem (2016). While Holub talks about Nietzsche’s “eugenic calculations”, he does not mention his notion of a “great politics”, which aims at breeding superior humans. This notion is central for Hugo Drochon’s Nietzsche’s Great Politics (2016) and Gary Shapiro’s Nietzsche’s Earth. Great Events, Great Politics (2016), which are critically examined in the article. Shapiro’s “postmodern” interpretation of Nietzsche’s thought neglects Zarathustra’s crucial statement that “The Übermensch is the meaning of the earth”. Drochon uses Bernard Williams’s four criteria to define what a “coherent politics” is. Drochon’s arguments that Nietzsche is indeed a political thinker are persuasive. However, William’s criteria are not sufficient and need to be amended.

This article reviews the most relevant monographs published in Spanish between 2012 and 2018. The latter have a particular focus on the relevance of Nietzsche’s philosophy for contemporary philosophy of mind, but they are also concerned with the reception of some fundamental tenets of Nietzsche’s political thought as well as with the reception of his work in Spain and the reconstruction of his intellectual itinerary.